


Back to Black

by neversaydie



Series: Somewhat Damaged [10]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Clint Needs a Hug, Cutting, Depression, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Abuse, References to Suicide, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 13:29:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversaydie/pseuds/neversaydie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint feels so useless that he dislocates a finger punching the wall. At least it's the wall, that time.</p><p>It takes three days for Clint to fall back on a tried and tested method of mood regulation.</p><p>It takes five for Phil to catch him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back to Black

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Self-harm implied and depicted, not graphic. SPOILERS: Ambiguous suicide attempt shown, please proceed with caution.
> 
> This is a pretty fragmented narrative, intentionally so. I hope it isn't too hard to read and still makes sense. Thanks for reading and leaving feedback, you're all brilliant <3

Breathing feels amazing.

He's breathing too fast, even though he knows he's not supposed to, because it feels so good. Like the time he got choked out in Stuttgart and was released just before he lost consciousness. The first clear breath felt like heaven, like nothing had ever been that pure and necessary in his life.

That's what breathing is like. He can breathe as much as he wants, and no one can stop him. Breathing feels like freedom.

He realises Bruce is looking at him funny across the conference table and he forcibly stops focusing on his breathing. Stills his jiggling leg and breathes deep and even and tries to stop twisting his fingers together. Hill drones on and Bruce keeps looking at him, like he's an experimental anomaly he can't put his finger on.

Clint tries not to giggle when he looks away. Everything's funny today.

*

"Are you eating my food again Barton?"

"Meds make me hungry." Clint's halfway into the fridge, but this is only the third time today Tony's caught him at it. God knows how many times he's raided it uninterrupted. At least that's one of the perks of befriending a billionaire whose robot butler restocks his groceries for him (and that's a sentence Clint never expected to think).

"That's funny, I don't remember ever seeing 'makes you eat like a pregnant lady' listed as a side effect."

"Not my fault they didn't put you on the good shit." He emerges, brandishing ham and cheese to make yet another sandwich. He points a finger playfully at Tony, who notes a slight tremor in the archer's hand. "You have to be nice to the crazy guy, Phil will shoot you."

"Hey, I'm letting you eat me out of house and home without complaint, I'm pretty sure that counts as nice." He parks himself at the kitchen island and watches Clint assemble his sandwich, cataloguing his friend's movements now that he's starting to think there's something off. "Seriously, how much are you eating these days?"

"A fuckton. My metabolism's the craziest thing about me right now."

"I thought anti-depressants generally just made you gain weight, not cracked you out."

"I've been moved onto some SHIELD-issue stuff. Experimental, apparently. Supposed to let agents function on op while medicated." He explains quickly and shrugs, taking a huge bite of his sloppily-made sandwich and chewing thoughtfully. "Dunno how well it's working, but it feels good. Cracked out is one way of putting it. Sort of like half-mania, all the time, y'know?"

"And they thought you'd be a good candidate to experiment on because…?"

"Wasn't responding to any regular medication fast enough. That pretty much forced their hand."

He's doing his best not to talk with his mouth full, and Tony appreciates the courtesy. They've all been sprayed with crumbs by an overexcited Clint at one point or another, and he's bouncing on the balls of his feet at the moment, thrumming with energy. It's like someone's plugged him into a socket with too high an output, and he's starting to spark. Tony's beginning to feel tired just looking at him.

"They want me back in the field, so I don't have the time to figure out what meds will work through trial and error. If this one works well enough they'll clear me for active duty. I'm no good if I'm grounded."

"Are you sure they're not just, I dunno, hopping you up on painkillers so you can walk on a broken leg?"

Tony has always been the most suspicious of SHIELD and their motivations, especially when it comes to people he cares about. When exactly Clint Barton joined that list he's not sure, but now he's there he gets the full protection of Tony's paranoia just like everyone else. Whether he wants it or not.

"Maybe, I guess." Clint shrugs noncommittally. "I don't really care. I feel good, and I want to get back to work."

"Does Phil know about this?"

"Why, do I need a permission slip?" There's suddenly something vicious in Clint's easy smile, and Tony's somewhat taken aback. "Don't worry, I got a note from my daddy to say it's okay. He won't have to belt it out of me."

" _Clint_." Tony's fully shocked now, which isn't an easy thing to achieve. In all his manias and medication adjustment periods and crushing lows, he's never heard Clint say a word about his father, let alone joke about him. The last time families had been mentioned, Clint had quietly left the room to have a panic attack in private.

There's something wrong here. This is wrong.

"Jeez Stark, relax. Don't give yourself a fucking aneurysm." Clint rolls his eyes like a moody teenager, grabbing another piece of bread and stuffing half of it in his mouth at once, speaking through it thickly. "Gotta go, shit to do. See you later, tin man."

Left sitting in the wake of Hurricane Barton, Tony wonders what the fuck just happened.

*

SHIELD takes Clint off the medication a week later.

His hands are shaking too hard to shoot straight, and no one wants a repeat of the last time that happened. The team is secretly relieved, despite Clint's disappointment at not being cleared for duty. The nastiness that the meds seemed to induce wasn't the laid back, friendly Clint they knew and loved. They'd rather have Clint Barton be okay than have Hawkeye back in the field, not that the man himself will listen to them when they tell him that.

Clint feels so useless that he dislocates a finger punching the wall. At least it's the wall, that time.

It takes three days for Clint to fall back on a tried and tested method of mood regulation.

It takes five for Phil to catch him.

*

"No, Clint, you don't get to do this."

"You're not my fucking _parent_ ,Phil!" The archer snatches his arm back, holds it close to his body like he's protecting it, or it's protecting him. Dinner sits forgotten, as Clint storms away into the bedroom with Phil following close behind.

There's never a good time to have this talk, especially when Clint's been bouncing off the walls for days. Addressing the issue is dangerous, and control of the conversation is slipping away from Phil already. This wasn't how he'd wanted things to go.

"I'm not—Clint." Phil sighs, and for once Clint is angry at the weariness in his tone rather than guilty that he's caused it. He didn't fucking ask for this any more than Phil did. "You can't hurt yourself, okay? We'll try new meds or a new doctor or—"

" _We're_ not doing anything, Phil, it's _me_."

He can't bite back his anger, and he's not sure if he's mad at himself or Phil or just the whole fucking world. Everything's hot behind his eyes, and he can't think straight through the burn. At the moment, he doesn't even want to. Maybe he's allowed to be angry for a change. He spends so much time fighting, he feels like he's entitled to give in to his rage just this once.

"None of the medication works, and _I'm_ the one who has to go through the fucking withdrawal and side effects every time for nothing."

"You think this isn't hard on me too?"

Phil is so stupidly fucking calm that Clint wants to punch him just to get him to react. He feels crazier when Phil is so good at controlling himself and Clint just _can't_.

"I'd take your place in a second if I could, but all I can do is watch you suffer. I'm helpless."

"And I'm at the mercy of whatever fucking chemicals are being pumped into me this week!" He brandishes his cut up arm at Phil, who has the grace not to flinch as the mess of wounds littering his partner's flesh is shoved close to his face, but he's starting to lose his cool.

"This is the only thing that helps, so fucking _excuse me_ if I want to feel okay for five fucking minutes!"

*

It's not like his mind goes blank, exactly, more like he goes into a different part of his head.

This is the part in movies where there's a person locked in a symbolic glass box. When they're watching themselves do something they can't control, banging on the glass and screaming for themselves to stop. Disconnected. Freefall.

Clint doesn't bang and scream. He's too tired.

*

This time, it escalates to where even Phil can't keep his composure.

"If we're going to do this, you have to walk the damn line, Clint." He's never heard Phil so furious, and he shrinks back a little before his training can kick in and make him hold steady. "We have agreements to keep you safe, and you have to honour them."

"And what if I can't?" Clint's chest heaves, eyes burning with something frantic, as he comes back with just as much vitriol as is thrown at him. He gets in Phil's face, subconsciously trying to fight his way out of the corner he's backed into. "What if this is the one line I have to cross?"

"Then I will find a way to stop you." Phil grabs Clint's arms, shaking him like it's going to get some sense past the fog and into his brain. "I can't stand by and let this happen, Clint. I won't let you hurt yourself."

"Phil." Fingers are digging into his arms and there's someone shouting in his face and shaking him like a rag doll and he can't get away and he can't fucking breathe— "Phil, stop."

"If you won't fucking listen to me—"

"Phil. _Please_."

*

He thinks about sticking a gun in his mouth, before he realises he doesn't have one. He'd be able to walk down to the range and grab one, but the whiskey he'd lifted from Tony's stash upon sneaking into the tower has pretty much put a kibosh on his ability to move.

There's always the mirror. If he gets up, he can break it and be done by the time anyone reacts to the sound. Less effort than the range. More satisfying for a last hurrah. It seems like the best idea in the world.

Even drunk, he's quick.

From where he's hiding inside his head, Clint lets the fuzziness of alcohol and weariness overtake him. There's only a little pain, and that's nothing for him.

He closes his eyes.

*

"Fuck."

Phil realises what he's done and horror passes over his face as he drops his hands from Clint like he's been burned. The second he's released, Clint bolts. He may have training from SHIELD that normally keeps him calm in these situations, but right now he's got a lifetime of a whole different kind of training taking over.

See an opening. Take it. Get as far away as possible as fast as he can.

"Baby, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

But he's already gone.

The apartment door doesn't even bang shut behind him, because he hasn't taken the time to close it. Phil rushes out after him to find it wide open, a dent in the wall from where it had bounced off the plaster with the force of its opening. Knowing pursuit is useless (if Clint doesn't want to be caught, he won't be), he sits down heavily on the couch with his head in his hands. How could he do something like that, be so fucking stupid?

Raising his head, Phil notices Clint's boots sitting where he'd left them by the door, and is shaken out of his self-loathing. Something practical grips him and he's spurred into action. Clint has rabbited, he's walking around New York at 1am without shoes on, and he's possibly a danger to himself. It's happened before, though usually for different reasons, and Phil can do something about it. He can't fix the situation without Clint here, but he can fix this. He's already dialling Natasha before he realises he's got his phone in hand.

There's field procedure for retrieving a rogue agent. Clint reverts to his training, Phil reverts to his.

*

By the time she finds him, he's almost out.

"Barton? Clint, shit!"

She actually sounds panicked, and that's what makes him fight his way out from under the blanket of fatigue he's wrapped in. He forces his eyes open, but things are blurry and all he registers is a smudge of red hair as she moves around him. She's moving bits of him, but it's all too jumbled together for him to figure out what's going on. He finds he doesn't much care, he just wants to sleep.

"Nat?" Words are hard, and he wishes that she'd turned up a bit earlier so he wouldn't have to make such an effort. "Y'okay?"

"You fucking asshole." She slaps him hard across the face, and he blinks dully at the shock of pain. "Stay awake."

She's talking to someone else. On a comm? Are they on op?

"I've got him. He's bleeding out, he needs a hospital. Get Banner up here."

"Nat?"

"I'm here." She's here. She's got him. This was always how it was going to be. "Stay with me, Clint."

That's how he fades out, with her warm next to him on the cold bathroom floor and her voice falling away in his ears.

"Clint, you have to stay awake."

Orders are orders, but this time he can't follow them.

His eyes slip closed again, and everything goes back to black. 


End file.
